Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher ups the overall storyline of The Dresden Files with a new villain group that makes Dead Beat one of the best books in the series so far. Dead Beat gives us background information on Bob the Skull, introduces us to Butters, gives us great adversaries with the Kemmler Necromancers, and gives us the amazing Ramirez. Cowl and Corpsetakeer are amazing villains that give the series a breath of fresh air as far as evil and scary bad guys. Dead Beat has Harry dive more into the grey areas of his profession and we see him really start to do some really borderline actions that make the reader worried about his future. We also see Dresden actually working with the wardens and realizing that there is a group orchestrating a lot of the evil in these books.

The most iconic scene in this entire series is in Dead Beat and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please do not spoil yourself. I already know what happened in that scene before I started this series because of drawings of Harry but the scene was still just as great as I thought it would be.

The reason I read The Dresden Files is because of the change that I see in Harry as these books progress. Putting Harry in dangerous, life or death situations where he has to constantly compromise his integrity in order to get out of sticky situations. This constant compromising and straddling the line of good and bad will take its toll on Harry and change him. I can see that subtle change in Dresden as this series goes later and later. One of the best Dresden Files so far in an extremely fun series that is amazing on audiobook.